


Midnight Riders

by Eridell



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gift Fic, Lola - Freeform, Maria is clueless, Midnight Racing, Mindless Fluff, Phil's adorable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:05:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eridell/pseuds/Eridell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson and Hill find a better use for a SHIELD test road after a long day's work, and Hill couldn't have in her wildest dreams expected what laid in wait at the end of the race.</p><p>Gift fic for Rugichan/Askphilmariacoulson</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Riders

**Author's Note:**

> So I've literally never written for this pairing, but I can feel an addiction brewing. Oh God, someone help me. I don't need another pairing eating my brain.
> 
> There's two more fics coming relatively soon with this pairing for Rugichan, because she's amazing and she's donating some amazing chibi doodles for the Askfitzsimmons giveaway. Hope you like it, dollface! <3

Most people wouldn’t pin Maria Hill for the thrill-seeker type. And in all honesty, she wasn’t. But there was something about the roar of a high-powered engine and the whip of cold night air that settled her nerves and centered her thoughts better than any kind of gym training or mundane distraction. Stealing away to tear up a highway was one of the few moments that she could get away from work – really escape without a single thought to paperwork or corralling new agents or putting out some metaphorical fire within SHIELD’s upper ranks.

And when she had company, that just made the deal even sweeter.

She could hear Lola rumbling behind her even without looking in the mirror, a low purr of thunder dancing with a metallic clap of lightning when she shifted gears and pushed her bike faster. He was gaining on her, but still far enough behind that his headlights only barely touched her rear tire. The stretch of highway they were racing across was abandoned, the only two occupants a cherry-red sportscar and the sleek black Kawasaki darting back and forth across the empty lanes.

This was a ritual for them. Every time Coulson came back from a rather strenuous mission and didn’t feel like using his mandated downtime to actually relax, they came out here and raced. The stretch of road they always used was normally for evasive maneuver training, but when the cadets went to their barracks and the sun went down it made a perfect location for a couple of senior agents looking to blow off some steam and burn a little company gas.

“You’re a little dodge-happy tonight.” The comment came out through the comm piece in her helmet with the edge of a grin that she didn’t have to see his face to know was there. And it was true: she’d been weaving between the lanes a little more than usual that night. “Long day?”

God, that was an understatement. “Cadet drill rotations,” she replied flatly, twisting the handlebar to cut him off when he roared his engine to close more of the gap between them. _Gonna have to try harder than that, Coulson._

The knowing tone that responded said very clearly that he knew exactly why she’d be a little on edge. “Can’t say I envy you,” he said back after a couple of seconds that she suspected masked a chuckle at her dodge. “At least it’s not intake.”

Ugh. Dealing with the first week of drills was nothing short of a nightmare. Whiny brats _everywhere_. She rolled her eyes behind her visor before urging her bike faster with a twist of her wrist, temporarily pulling away from the low-beam lights illuminating the road under her tires. The line went silent again and she let herself fall back into idle thoughts that blurred with the rumble of the road, letting her weight shift the bike from side to side across the empty two-lane road.

He was going easy on her. Usually they were neck-in-neck, battling for lanes and sometimes even dipping into the shoulder of the road to pass one another. But tonight he’d been behind her the entire time, his pace almost lackadaisical as he trailed her rear light. That in itself was enough to set her on edge because he never just let her win. Ever. Their score was somewhere in the teens for each, and never out of the multiple nights they’d spent out here had he just laid back and let her win. Something was up.

They were nearing the sharp curve they usually used as the checkered line when she finally had enough of his supposed tampering, fingers squeezing on the brake as she cut the handlebars hard to the left. The brake engaged with a vicious squeal as her tires tore up the asphalt, front wheel acting as a pivot to spin her around until she was facing the opposite way in the lane he wasn’t tailing her in.

His tires matched the noise and Lola came to a sudden stop with his window to her immediate left, window rolling down as she raised her gloved hands to tug her helmet off and shake her hair loose. The rush of cold summer air that hit her face almost made her shiver, teeth gritting against the goose bumps that erupted along her arms under her SHIELD onesuit as she turned to watch him with a wary eye. “Were you just gonna sit back and let me put another tally on my side of-“

“May I take you to dinner sometime?”

Maria stopped dead in her tracks, the grips of her gloves tightening against the sleek plastic of the top of her helmet as she dropped it on top of the gas tank in front of her. She didn’t answer immediately, too busy trying to wipe away the look of dumbstruck surprise she knew was plastered across her face. He seemed unaffected: the question came out with the same smoothness he possessed when dealing with anything official, face unreadable through the mild-mannered smile he always seemed to have no matter the situation. But his eyes were locked, dead set on her face and she would have been a liar if she said she didn’t squirm a little under the intense focus fixated on her in that brief pause.

He seemed to pick up on her confusion (bless his heart and his almost terrifying perceptive skills), propping a forearm on the edge of his rolled down window to lean toward her and beak the almost awkward silence. “I was gonna tell you that I owed you a favor for winning,” he continued, the corners of his mouth twitching a hair higher as he spoke again. “You seemed like you needed something to laugh at, at the very least.”

The twitch of his eyes at the tail end of his response said more than he probably anticipated, but he couldn’t have expected to be the only one of SHIELD’s senior agents with razor-sharp observational skills. Coulson was stoic on his best days and never really let anything show, but the momentary flash of his gaze seemed… nervous, like he really expected her to laugh.

When Maria finally found her words again she answered back with a faint trace of a smile, pale eyes turning toward the back of his car briefly before looking back after a quiet bark of a chuckle. “Are you trying to ask me on a date, Agent Coulson?”

The title made him recoil a bit, nose wrinkling as he shook his head. “We’re off the clock. I’d rather not revert back to titles.” That was fair. “But yes. If you’d be okay with it, I’d like to-“

“Yes.” She made sure to put enough force behind her response to cut him off, the smile on her lips widening as she leaned more of the weight of her bike into the foot she had planted against the road. “I think I’d like that. Maybe getting out and doing something other than driving like hooligans would do us both some good.”

Another momentary pause lapsed between them, neither of their gazes shifting from the one locked onto it for several heavy seconds before he broke the moment with a hearty laugh. “Well, I guess that settles it,” he concluded, shifting Lola back into gear before looking back to the woman leaned just outside the car window. “Um… Thursday night?”

“Thursday night works for me.”

“Great.” His face broke out into what Maria would dare to call a grin with the final response, gaze flashing forward through the windshield before turning back to watch her through the corner of his eye. “I’m gonna call it a night. See you bright and early?”

“As always.”

He nodded and rolled the window up, grin still firmly in place (if not a little wider) by the time Lola rumbled off down the road behind her. She turned her head to watch him drive off, remaining frozen in place until after his tail lights were mere pinpricks around the curve of the road. This was more than likely breaking some kind of fraternization rule deep in SHIELD’s senior agent protocol, and if all truth be told the idea of setting that kind of example was a bit of a blow to her normally ramrod stance on the rules. But if Phil Coulson could be persuaded to bend a little fine print - and offer some company outside of work while doing it – then who was she to shut him down?

Okay, and maybe that giddy little grin was sticking with her. Just a little, though.

She slipped her helmet back on and rolled off down the road in the opposite direction she’d just come in, traipsing down the almost perfectly straight road she’d already shredded earlier to give herself some more time to think. But this time, it wasn’t to escape stress… it was to squash down the faint pit of butterflies that had erupted behind her navel. There was no telling who was lurking about SHIELD’s ground base, and the last thing she needed was some stupid cadet seeing her on the verge of bashful.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic requests are currently open on my Tumblr! http://eridell.tumblr.com


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